Consumer confidence up everywhere but New York City, survey finds

Consumers in the state’s major metropolitan areas were feeling more confident in the second quarter, the latest Quarterly Consumer Sentiment survey from the Siena Research Institute found.

Both the Capital Region and Syracuse passed the breakeven point, with optimists more numerous than pessimists, although the other metros, with the exception of New York City, remained in the pessimist camp.

Why do economists care? Because they believe the confidence index is a strong indicator of consumers’ willingness to spend, and that spending makes up more than two-thirds of the nation’s overall economic activity.

While New York City was the only area that showed a decline in its index, down 1.9 points to 80.5, it still has the highest index of any metro in the state, and is above the breakeven point of 76. Ranking second is Syracuse, where the index climbed 5.4 points to 77.0; followed by Albany, where the index climbed 5.1 points to 76.8.

The overall index combines a current sentiment and future sentiment reading. Notably, the future sentiment index trails current sentiment by several points in every metro except New York City.

“Consumers remain skeptical about the future as in nearly every area of the state, current confidence is higher than the future outlook,” said Douglas Lonnstrom, the institute’s founding director and a professor of statistics and finance at Siena College. He also said a survey on consumers’ plans to make major expenditures strengthened, with plans to spend more outpacing plans to cut back by a two-to-one margin.